Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The shadows of war hang more menacingly over Northeast Asia at the opening of a brave new year than they have at any time since, well, since the last time the region was edging into armed conflict. That might be since the Korean mini-crisis of nearly a year […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com WASHINGTON ― You have to appreciate Mikhail Kalashnikov’s contribution to the world. Here was the guy who invented the most efficient mass-killer of all, and he lived to the ripe old age of 94. I first heard about the AK47 as a journalist in Vietnam. I never met […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com On the day before Jang Song-Thaek’s execution, his wife, Kim Kyong-Hui, divorced him. The man whom she had met when they were both students at Kim Il-Sung University, he a charmer who played the accordion at parties, she the daughter of the Great Leader Kim Il-Sung, had deserted […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The demise of the man who was once the power behind the throne in North Korea inspires so many theories that all you can say for sure is that nobody knows what’s really going on in the corridors of power in Pyongyang. A couple of these theories are […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com TACLOBAN, Philippines — The great game for power and influence in Asia laps up on the storm-ravaged shores of this devastated city in the form of a Chinese vessel known as the Peace Ark, with 100 doctors and nurses on board and 300 beds for patients in need […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com We’ll never hear the end of questions about what a different world it would have been if President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had not been shot and killed one sunny day in Dallas in 1963. The 50th anniversary, Nov. 22, has spawned countless articles and a number of books […]